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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25604191">Eye of the Beholder</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/VelvetDove/pseuds/VelvetDove'>VelvetDove</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dead by Daylight (Video Game)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Blood, Cannibalism, Corruption, Death, Death Rituals, F/F, Gore, Gross, Obsession, Obsessive Behavior, POV Second Person, Purple Prose, Rituals, Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:49:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,008</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25604191</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/VelvetDove/pseuds/VelvetDove</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She wants her pretty skin back, so that she may wear it. This is what she wants, and so it shall be.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Adiris | The Plague/Reader</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Eye of the Beholder</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>My first time writing a reader POV and any sort of gore. Hope it's not too bad!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The fragmented beauty of the priestess had always stood out to you. She was melancholy, a tattered song crying out to you from the unknown dark of the storm. Her image sung a haunted melody, one that refused to be plucked from your wearied mind.</p>
<p>This is why you seek her out, to begin with. You want to understand the withering beauty who mourns for something eternal, draped in sickness and ancient silks. This can’t be helped; your heart has always been good, and it leads you to believe kindness is a balm that soothes even the worst of wounds.</p>
<p>It is this that she takes from you first.</p>
<p>You are aimless when you wander, for the rules are unknown to you. The other lambs have grown strong, but you are still fresh, and your limbs wobble when you try to move on your own. But you do not seek their help. No - this, they wouldn’t understand. </p>
<p>And perhaps this is your initial appeal; the others are too jaded, but <em> you </em> don’t know any better. There is a chance that everything can be fixed, that everyone can heal. Surely, all that was needed was effort and unity. Your light is pure, burning brightest.</p>
<p>It is snuffed out in the bowels of the temple, where you find her. Your blood runs hot over the coolness of the altar and your bones become dust beneath the bray of her censer. Your eyes are empty glass when she takes the knife to carve you open, but you feel it still, even from your place at the edge of the dark. She parts your flesh from your body like gossamer, unwrapping the blossom-pink beauty of your insides to bear answers you do not have. It hurts when she sinks her gilded hands into you, a pain that is raw and foreign. There is a desperation that curls within you when she tears you apart, but you don’t believe it to be yours. Her fingers wrap around your still-beating heart so she can pluck it from the broken chasm of your breast, and brings it to her open mouth to sink her teeth in before it has stopped trembling.</p>
<p>You are fearful and angry when you wake, but not in the sense one might think; it is a reverent kind of feeling, a breed of fervor that is beautiful and everlasting. The newfound darkness that caresses the edges of your mind urges you to hold it, to let it grow.</p>
<p>So you do.</p>
<p>It is a longing, at first. You wish to return to the priestess, to her sweet corse of rot, but there is something that presses from the center of your mind towards the edges, where the darkness makes its home. It is your own voice, unwavering and reasonable, telling you that this is not a path you want to take. For a time, you are able to listen. For a time, you believe your resolve is strong.</p>
<p>It is a belief that shatters easily, just as glass does, when you see something through the eyes of another. It is a stolen memory, given to you by the one that keeps you - all of you - here. You see the priestess in a land swept by shifting sands and shimmering rivers, bearing a beauty that is unmatched, ethereal in her divinity. Here, she is the Queen of Purgation, and she revels beneath a scorching sun in the gaze of an empire that loves her. You are given the gift of her name from the echoes of the disciples, and you will mend its ancient glory.</p>
<p>Adiris takes your face in her hands when you find her again, and the gold of her fingers are no longer adorned with your blood. Her language is one you should not understand, yet it swathes your mind in the softness of its silken words. She wants her pretty skin back, so that she may wear it. This is what she wants, and so it shall be.</p>
<p>When you next gaze through the fog, it is from the other side. You bear the likeness of her, the one that thrived beneath the foregone sun, and you laugh when they break beneath the chanted scriptures of the tablet you carry. You were a lamb once, as they were. Now, you will bring them to the slaughter.</p>
<p>It is only the pretty ones she needs. Their names have long since faded beneath the veil smothering your conscience, but you remember their skin, as you do Adiris’.</p>
<p>The first one you bring is the one wrapped in flesh like dark velvet. The second hides her sharp features behind the lens of a camera, and the third disguises her fear with the voice of a dove. The priestess flays them above the stone bath and bleeds them until they are dry. Though their eyes become glass, they still cry, just as you did. She sinks her teeth into their twitching bodies, taking until she is full. When they hang consumed and tattered, she bathes in their essence, and once she is done, her likeness begins to fade from you.</p>
<p>She blossoms as you wither. She stands before you, wearing the skin she had before this place, this creature, this punishment. Her rot becomes yours and as she gazes at you, your own voice presses through the murk of your corrupted mind: <em> fanatic. </em>But her eyes hold the light as the galaxy does stars, and you find you don’t quite care if you are the one to shoulder her burden.</p>
<p>She smiles at you, reborn in beguile and temptation. Her hands find your waist and she leans down to press her life-flushed lips to your dead ones and you open your mouth to the taste of a desert rose, of holiness, of everything that once was. You lay in her arms, a broken dead thing, willing to be her martyr if it means she will forever draw breath, if it means to preserve a beautiful thing until existence itself ceases to be.</p>
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